Urban Failure

I guess you could say that my urban screens project was a failure, because it was. All my content was put to waste with my lack of a backup plan, I fell short with choosing a screen location, i was caught up in the whole idea of using the sister store to my work place, Bond and Bond Queen Street. Unfortunately there was a Managers conference week during the period in which i had contacted him, and it had totally slipped his mind when asking the regional manager, so three days to crunch time i panicked and gave him a call, turns out i can't use their screens as it is the lead store in Auckland, and all the big Hot spot executives visit the store too much to have a project taking up screen time for advertisements. Well all well in making excuses, i was still out of a screen, this broke my spirit totally, as i was banking on the screen setup working for me, as all my content was to link in with that shops layout.

No matter though, i am even a little disappointed with my content as well, as it did not turn out how i had imagined it, but thats the way things always turn out, as it was limited to my physical abilities versus in my head where anything can really happen.

No matter, Full speed ahead into Exhibition Week. (Fingers crossed)

Permission

Well for this project, I have approached my sister store of Bond & Bond Queen Street, and asked for use of their screens, two in fact, one in the front of the store, and one in the back, as i need a bit of distance between them for my idea, it has taken awhile to get permission and it is all really riding on it, the manager of the store has asked the regional manager, and i am waiting to here back from both, I approached the manager with my ideas and he seemed to not be bothered, as he checked the content of it and i reassured him there will be nothing overly violent or graphic, (content must be below a PG rating).

The layout of the store is very good as it helps with my content, the fact that i am trying to show eye exercises on a screen is a play on what you are suppose to do, on one screen the eye in the front represents your eye and when you look into the "distance" aka my screen in the back, you get to see the scenery or the landscape, but it is inside another screen.

The use of two screens i think creates the user interactivity, as if the person is interested they will go and see what the other screen has to offer. As well as bringing them into a store that sells private screens, which in turn link people to the public.

Will check in with the Manager of Queen Street again soon, Hope all is well.

Eye Damage

After a few interviews with Kim, my ideas, as i was told, needed to be flipped upside down and looked at in all different ways, which was very good advice i guess because my idea now i feel is not to shabby, the original concept was one standard video which explained that use of a home computer puts us in the public, and when we use that computer it is just the same as being in the public, eg. Facebook, Twitter, Myspace and so on. This idea is one i like, the fact that a home computer puts you in the public arena.

With this i thought about how much we use our home computers, and I'm sure its a lot, as the amount of time i personally can spend on a site such as Facebook is huge, and i am sure it isn't helping my already deteriorating eye sight. Then this linked me to the Eye Damage concept, and i fleshed out a simple documentary style video which i could display on a screen somewhere, the video would contain shots and images as well as a constant image or animation of an eye slowly deteriorating with time, as the video went on the eye got worse.

Well with this idea i went to see Kim again, who again turned my idea upside down and showed me some more interesting ideas, that i could maybe use, he saw that i was interested in the Eye damage side of things so he told me to go with that, as with my original idea, it was more like ideas all in one, and he said to go with just one concept, and that is the Eye damage.

So we were talking about what i was going to do, and how i could maybe use Bond & Bond, and how there are many screens that i could use in store. This lead to the idea of Two screens, one in the front with an Eye, and a little bit of text explaining basic eye damage, and a quick and easy prevention, and then that will lead to the second screen in the store, this second screen will then display a second animation or slide show, with more text and images.

My Water-Ma-Phone

Gosh, well i am obviously behind in my blogging, which is unfortunate because i have had some troubles at home, but not to mix uni with home. so here we go

My waterphone began with the design principles, and they were fairly simple, get your normal mixing bowls, and weld them together, drill holes evenly around the edge of the bowl and weld them to the bowls as well.

I sourced the bowls from Farmers and the warehouse as well as Mitre 10, which is also where i got my 4mm threaded rod.
So now i had 6 mixing bowls, and 2m worth of threaded rod, which turns out costs a little more then i expected but no matter, the final product will produce some pretty wicked sounds, well so i thought.

One trip into uni and my idea of welding the bowls and rods together was put on a stop, which looking at now, i should have followed up on. no matter, i feel that my final result would be no different to what i have now without the welding of the bowls.

After this trip into uni i stopped in at Mitre 10 again to see if i could find a fix for this, simply speaking i was looking for some nuts and washers, which left me with a couple of packets of half nuts and nylon locking nuts, which i feel has done the trick.

Originally i was not going to make or source a bow to use on my waterphone, and was content with just hitting it with a metal chop stick, as to have a sort of metallic xylephone which a reverbirating chamber.

This i knew and felt was not very special at all. When Phil told me how to make my own bow, it all seemed right to give it a try, and try as i might to beat the random things in life, i ended up having to do the bow two days before final performance, and alas the bow itself was useless unless it is covered in rosen, which phil kindly provided.

The bow was simple enough to make, i just pulled over on the side of the motorway and snapped some dry bamboo from the bush, got back in my car and drove to the warehouse again and purchased a 25$ roll of really fine fishing line (-.-).

Now the bow making got a little harder, i went through all of my pillaged bamboo in the end to produce one good bow and several really bad bows, and many snapped ones. the one good bow was made and used to great success, and produce a very nice eerie sound as i had hoped from this whole project.

Performance and practice, the practice side of things was really just experimenting with the instrument to see what it could actually do, seeings as we were to improvise in our main performance, which i didnt really mind until i heard the first group perform.

Well hahah what can i say, going second after a group who litterally blew my socks off, was very hard, especially when our group had really no musical talent between us, all we had was a simple game plan, start off soft, then gradually get louder and louder until we finished, which in a way worked, as we had chris blowing his pipes so that they sounded like Fog Horns and Bryan bashing his pipes, while i bowed my waterphone making high pitched squeeks.

Sound Building.

Well to start this semester off, we were introduced to the Intricacies of Sound by Phil, who showed us what he does and can do, from simple things like making sounds with rocks, yea it sounds silly, but to hear it personally its kinda cool, he also went through a box of sound goods, show us things that all made interesting sounds, and were all seemingly simple to make,

Phil's box of sound gadgets.

This later lead onto the project, which was to simply or rather not so simply create a sound device.
This is what puzzled me the most, because most of the good instruments have of course been made, so all we were to do was to make a variant of the instrument i guess.

Ahh well, i had ideas and the sound i wanted to achieve, so i did the most simple of reasearh methods, i type 'eerie sound instrument' into good old Google. Thus led me to two relativly simple sound instruments, both of which are used in Movies and both of which produce a similar sound.

Firstly the Waterphone, created by Richard A. Waters, which seems simple enough to make, but it wouldnt be using any plans as there are none, but the idea and the concept are simple enough.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterphone

Secondly is the Theremin, which was invented by Professor Léon Theremin. This would be a little harder to make it seemed, but a little more digging found that there a kits to build the theremin which is not ideal and i wouldnt want to buy it, but with a little more digging i stumbled upon a clip on Youtube which explained a simple way to make one without the kit, all that was needed is Three Am radios.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theremin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSYPUhPGavQ

EXPO

Well i am a little worried about this expo, as i would have maybe liked more time, as is always the case. I got in nice and early to put the last of my work together with my lovely looking A1 poster, i have two A4 print outs to go with it, originally i was hoping for A3 print outs but my house hold printers were playing huffy when it came to printing them, so i had to scale them down into A4's respectively, oh well, i tried my best and i am well versed in my thought processes as they are my own, and i will be ready to receive my crits to the best of my ability.

Fingers crossed.

Video Crits

Well I ended up showing my video, whether it was the pressure of everyone in the class losing attention or the fact that my movie felt twenty minutes long I'm not sure why, but I so badly wanted to fast forward it right to the end,

I presented near the end, and I was a little shaken because I was too over the top on my story, which distracted from the apparatus's actual film.
This near the beginning of the project, I got the idea for road kill into my mind and it stayed there, there was nothing else that I could link to the tire apparatus, well I didn't really try with more then one idea. Which was a huge floor in my development, I got central minded and focused on one thing rather then broadening my ideas and developing other concept, I look back now and wish that I had branched out a bit more as to give my self more options to work with.

Well I have done what James suggested at the end of my film, and trimmed the unnecessary stuff from it, aka my critter getting hit and the final scene, as he said they weren’t needed, and after rereading and thinking I have to say, he was right. I got to caught up in the plot and the story behind my film that I didn’t realize that I had some OK footage with the apparatus, that I could display in a interesting way, like the hand out said to do. HA HA oh well.

Now though I am focusing on REVIEW WEEK eek! Ha-ha all for the Best.